Nithya is interested in developing AI music models and human-AI interaction paradigms that expand music creativity and form. She works closely with performing musicians, including herself, to develop tools to support and enhance their creative practice. Drawing from her practice as a Hindustani vocal musician, she is particularly interested in working with non-Western forms of musical practice.
Nithya Shikarpur is a third year PhD student at MIT EECS where she is advised by Dr. Anna Huang. Drawing on her experience as a musician, she works on generative models for human-AI music co-creation, with a special interest in non-Western genres of music. She completed her masters in Computer Science from University of Montreal and Mila where she developed GaMaDHaNi a hierarchical generative model for Hindustani vocal music. Nithya has been studying Hindustani music for over 20 years and is also learning and performing jazz vocals as an Emerson Harris scholar at MIT.